


Only One Cause

by Mongoosie



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: 71st Hunger Games Victor Peeta, Child Abuse, District Twelve Politics, Emotionally Tortured Mentors, Forced Marriage, Forced Relationship, Kinky sex, Manipulative Peeta, Multi, Parental Haymitch, Plot Beats Close as Katniss is Still Katniss, Prostitution of Victors, Sole Victor Katniss, Substance Abuse, Twisted relationships, World of the Capitol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-04-28 21:11:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14457825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mongoosie/pseuds/Mongoosie
Summary: The life of a Victor is the ultimate goal for the twenty-four Tributes in the Hunger Games. Fame. Accolades. A life of comfort and immense wealth. Becoming the third Victor of District Twelve should have been the gateway to a new life for Katniss Everdeen and her family; one of comfort and peace from their days of starvation in the Seam. Instead, Katniss is thrown into the machinations of her mentors; forced into a relationship she never wanted with the best friend she lost in his brother's ashes to quell her rebellious actions in the Arena. Yet, as her relationship with Gale Hawthorne works to blunt her edges for an increasingly moralizing Capitol and soothe the revolution-adverse President her increasing interest in her fellow Victor, Peeta Mellark, may jeopardize everything.





	1. Before the 74th Hunger Games - Haymitch

I was startled awake by a shattering boom that knocked me off the couch. Knife in hand, it took me several seconds to spot the wet stain on my filthy wall where my once-whole glass exploded, its broken body on the floor along with some of the finest whiskey from District Eleven. “That was my best china,” I groused.

“Thought you weren’t going to wake up,” a plummy voice drawled behind me.

I whirled around, ignoring how the world tilted. Behind the couch was Peeta Mellark, dressed in what he called his exercise clothes, the bulk of his body sweaty with the early summer heat that currently blessed the District. He gave me a shrewd once-over and shook his head as though he was the guy turning forty instead of sixteen. “Really, Haymitch?” he said. “You know what day it is…”

“Yeah, that’s why I opened the brown stuff this time,” I said.

A sigh. “I’m going back to my place before the fumes get me,” he announced. “Be by mine in an hour; Effie’s meeting us there.”

With another look around my place he walked out. Damned Capitol mutt; been back here for less than three days and already he’s made me feel like shit in my own home. Granted, I am shit; but still the confirmation hurts. With a groan I stand, allowing the world to get back in place. Were it not the Reaping I would’ve immediately went back to the couch, telling the boy in my own special way to fuck off, but no; I was needed and all he’d have to do is break another fucking glass and look at me with those big blue eyes and I’d be the one apologizing for weeks. I hate those big blue eyes. I drag myself to my bathroom and start at the open door nearby; in the bedroom that I barely use a simple suit was laid out for me, clean and just my size for a change. My bathroom looked…cleaner. There was even a fresh toothbrush and paste by the sink and fresh towels on the racks that looked fluffy and new. He must have been here longer than I originally thought, damned kid.

I take a long shower. The soap reminded me of my mother who used to clean Merchant houses and often smelled of lemons. Some years back in a drunken stupor I ordered a whole crate of this soap after I found it on a Capitol dial and damn if I even got through the first layer in the box. I try not to think of my mother and her cracked hands and stooped back; best not to recall the last moments I saw her with a future before my Reaping on this damnable anniversary. Begrudgingly I dry off on the nice towels and start getting dressed, trying not to laugh thinking of the boy’s hunt through my drawers for anything clean or less holed, would not be surprised if I came home one day to see all my clothes thrown away. Not giving a fuck about my hair or stubble I stumble out of my house, cursing at the sun for blazing down at a time when I’m normally in a nice coma. It doesn’t take long to get to the boy’s house, which was exactly like mine except for being somewhat dusty and yet infinitely cleaner than my hovel. In the distance, I hear a shower and smell coffee brewing in the kitchen; obviously I was faster than the boy thought.

The kitchen was the most favored place in the house, its floors and counter-tops gleaming from the abundance of natural light and fancy steel and chrome appliances that came from a remodel he requested within the last year. My best friend, the coffee maker,  was filled with fresh coffee and next to it was a mug readied with sugar and cream and a plate with a heaping sandwich filled with fresh meats and cheeses that could only come from District Ten. Damned that boy; one minute you want to slit his throat with the glass he broke and the next you want to hug him and cry.

I was halfway through my sandwich and on my second mug of coffee by the time the boy came to the kitchen, dressed in a rather sedate dark brown suit with a tie that somewhat matched my own with his hair in drying curls framing his face much like how the Capitol has liked it of late. “Bet that shit’s annoying the fuck out of you,” I said with my mouth full.

He rolled his eyes, flipping his hair out of his face with a practiced motion. “Could be worse, I suppose,” he said, the vowels slipping into a Capitol tone that grated the ear. “Any coffee left for me?”

“What you think?”

I get a rueful smile, though I did at least leave a sizeable cup, which he pours for himself with no adornment. “The 74th Hunger Games,” he said, raising his cup towards me.

“In a couple of years, they won’t be kids from your class no more,” I said.

“And instead it’d be their kids and I’m going to be the drunk one on stage?”

“Hey now, who says I won’t be there drunker than you?”

“Your liver, for one,”

I scowled as he laughed at his own joke. He gave me a smile that harkened back to when he was a shaking kid with baby fat whose house was ‘too quiet’. “Haymitch, I’m worried about you,” he announced.

“Peeta…”

“You didn’t sound good, I had to throw something to wake you up, and you look kind of yellow. You need to go to the doctors when we get to the Capitol; if they can make Caesar Flickman look like he’s forty they can certainly do something to help you.”

I roll my eyes. “Victors don’t get to live long lives, kid; those that do are the exception,” I said.

“Be the exception, then,”

I wanted to retort but there were those big blue eyes staring into my shriveled soul, reminding me that I am one of the few people in the District who give more than a proprietary fuck about him. Fucker was right up there with Effie Trinket as one of the few who could make you feel like shit with just one look. “I’ll see a doctor,” I said.

All I receive is a triumphant smirk. “Great, that will be the first stop for you while our Tributes are going through their beautification,” he enthused.

“Sneaky fucker…”

He winks just as there’s a knock on our door. Before he could even think to move a loud feminine voice and clicking heels announced the entrance of Effie Trinket, my partner in hell for the past fourteen years. “Yoo-hoo! Peeta? Haymitch?”

“In the kitchen, Effie,” the boy said as I stuffed what remained of my sandwich in my mouth.

Effie teetered in dressed to the hilt in garish pink, her makeup the vampiric pale favored in the Capitol these days. “There you are, with Haymitch dressed and ready to boot!” she simpered. “How fortuitous; I have been having nightmares of trying to wake him up myself this year. Oh, my, Peeta…this kitchen…”

“I have been taking advantage of those baking tours,” the boy admitted, side-stepping the snarky comebacks on the tip of my tongue. “I particularly admired Hadrian Maclure’s set up for his ovens…just wish I was home long enough to enjoy mine.”

“Well, dear, you will be done with your schooling soon and then you can spend as much time back here as you’d like!”

The boy and I exchanged looks and Effie gave us a dramatic enough narrow of her eyes to understand that she knows who might be listening. “Perhaps,” he replied. “Coffee?”

“Oh, no thank you dear; we really must get going. Can’t be late.”

“Yeah, heaven forbid,” I smirk.

Both Effie and the boy give me withering looks, though the boy’s lacks heat. “Let’s clean up and get going then,” he drawled.

I abstained; while my place is a shithole I’ve been taking care of his when he’s not been in town, let him deal with his own crap. With his fancy school and Capitol living maybe he can consider it a humbling experience. After he was done with the clean-up Effie led the two of us outside where a car was waiting; this crap heap of a District is plenty walkable, at least from the Village to the town, but Effie adored being chauffeured around. We crowded into the vehicle and took the five minutes’ drive to the Mayor’s mansion. Outside the kids were gathering, looking miserable and thin and pathetic in their finest clothes as they went to the tables to get blood-verified. I looked at one kid, short for his age with his Seam-brown hair sticking to his head; he looked like my dead brother. They all look like twenty-four years of death. A hand on my shoulder startles me, makes me realize I was staring; it was the boy, whose Merchant eyes were narrowed with compassion. “Come on,” he sighed.

I followed the boy, wishing I was shit drunk instead of mildly hungover; wishing I had not have promised the boy I’d at least try after his Games to not actually be useless and miserable every Reaping. The foyer of the mansion was crowded with the Mayor, some Peacekeepers, and some various aides who looked at the three of us like we were pieces of shit or worse; from the Capitol. “Mayor Undersee, it is so good to see you,” Effie trilled in that practiced way that sounded fake for the recorders.

“Ms. Trinket,” the Mayor nodded tersely before glancing at me and the boy. “Mr. Abernathy, Mr. Mellark.”

“Peeta, please,” the boy smiled. “Were it not for three years ago I’d be just some kid out there waiting like anyone else.”

Oh, now wasn’t that just seditious? I could not help the snort at the tense looks on Effie and the mayor’s faces even as the boy remain placid. “Well…Peeta,” the mayor said after a moment. “It’s been too long.”

“Yes, it has; is Madge well?”

Another terse look; I do not know what that boy does with Madge Undersee but I know the mayor hates it as much as Peeta enjoys it and I mistrust it. Instead of answering the question the mayor turns to me and Effie. “This one’s going to be another example year,” he sighed.

Effie shook her head and I cursed while the boy looked confused; this was only the second Reaping he was participating in and for the most part he had not been privy to any of the Game’s machinations beyond his own participation. I gave him a warning look before he could attempt to ask any questions as one of the mayor’s aides came up with his prepared remarks. “It’s time for us to get out there,” Effie announced.

“Haymitch…” the boy murmured.

“It’s a garden conversation, Peeta.”

That shut him down. We followed the mayor, his staff, Effie, and some Peacekeepers back outside. It was a nut-cooker of a day and the sea of children waiting for slaughter were looking restless. I scanned the crowd and noted the Mayor’s daughter, dressed in white and looking so much like her mother and dead aunt  that I almost cry out. I take out my seat on the left of Peeta close to the end of the platform and produce my flask. Out of the corner of my eye I note one of the Peacekeepers sneering at me as I tipped back my drink, sighing with relief as the first hit of alcohol for the day entered my system; he did not need to know that I’m relatively sober, and this hit of liquor was watered down with cold tea because somehow I’ve become whipped by a fucking sixteen-year-old boy with girl's hair and a penchant for destroying perfectly innocent glasses of brown liquor.

I look at the boy, who was scanning the crowd with impeccably feigned dispassion. This should be his second oldest brother’s last year being eligible; there he was with the eighteen-year old boys and girls, fidgeting in Reaping clothes finer than most, but still likely handed down by a brother who aged out a year prior. I don’t know much about him, except for glimpses in town but from what the Mayor told me he might be safe; this was an example year after all and last year had already taken an older Merchant. The boy finally spotted his brother, though his eyes slid over him and towards his own age group. Following his gaze, I see off to the side of Madge Undersee a few Seam girls and another blonde, that chubby girl from the shoe shop he used to be friendly with before chubby shoe shop girls got traded in for the Capitol’s finest. Granted, I never could figure out who the girl he blushed over was during his Games; maybe it really was Madge.

The Mayor and Effie went through their opening spiel no one liked like the professionals they were and I continued to sip on my weak drink, pretending to get drunker and sadder to the boy’s fake distain and the amusement of the cameras and the young kids in the audience too little to understand slaughter. Twenty-four years made me a professional at ignoring the disgust, the mutters, the wrought faces of parents anticipating that this year would be the year that they’d lose their children. Before the boy I would’ve already been halfway in the bag; now I’m barely there but at least the act keeps me from listening close to a speech heard for forty fucking years of my life.

Effie’s long fingers reached into the Reaping bowl, weighted this year by the girls with the fewest slips; either fresh and young or careful and well off. “Primrose Everdeen,” she announced.

The murmurs in the crowd started as a waif-like Merchant-looking girl left the group of twelve-year-old children in their first Reaping. Beside me the boy shifted, causing me to glance at him just as a young woman began screaming. “Prim! Prim! I volunteer! I volunteer as Tribute!”

I looked back as the sixteen-year-old section parted around a Seam girl, one of the ones from the group I saw the boy glance at. She was thin and short, her olive skin and dark nearly-black hair at odds with the girl she was volunteering for. “Katniss, no!” the blonde girl sobbed as the older girl rushed to take the little one in her arms.

Katniss Everdeen. Shit; even I know that name. It’s been bandied around in the Hob during my trips for booze, and in the Community Home where I leave the boy’s projects, and even in town whenever I dared to go to the trains or to the shops when I couldn’t raid the boy’s pantry. She was only a girl, but to this District, she was a goddamn legend; the girl who refused to starve to death and instead fed the entire fucking District with her bow. Out the corner of my eye I saw the boy’s complexion drain and his hands tremble as Effie and the Mayor squabbled over the first volunteer this place ever had. I took note of how the cameras were trained on the girl, but were also focused on the stage, possibly witnessing something the Capitol might get too interested in. Finally, the Mayor must have approved for the girl’s sister was pulled away sobbing by some tall Seam boy before the Peacekeepers could interfere and the girl came up to the stage. Up close she really was a short slip of a thing, like any other Seam girl, but she was quite stoic as Effie tried to engage her in some form of banter. “Haymitch,” the boy gasped softly.

Another name was pulled, almost as an afterthought given the excitement the girl made. “Rory Hawthorne!” Effie announced.

The crowd got louder as a Seam boy from the thirteen-year-old section came through the crowd. I notice that the little girl, who was quietly weeping, was screaming now. Meanwhile the girl, whose face broke from its mask as soon as the name was called kept shaking her head frantically, almost in warning, at the tall kid who seemed to drop the girl’s sister in anguish. The Seam boy was on stage looking ready to vomit and the girl forgone the traditional handshake to hug him close to her with tears streaming down her face. Peacekeepers were getting antsy as the crowd started making more noise than normal, so much of it more mutinous than it had been in the years I’ve been to the Reaping.

Without hesitating I made to stand up only to fall back laughing. I make some speech about the girl’s guts while the boy, who had snapped out of his shock, pulled me bodily off the ground. His hands were trembling but his face held an embarrassed chagrin that fit with the situation as he made to lead me out of the square and towards the train. Far enough away from the cameras and the crowd I wound up being the person holding the boy upright. “Breathe, Peeta,” I whispered as we made it on the train.

“What the fuck, Haymitch…”

“Breathe, we’re almost there.”

There was the train car the boy took over when he went to and from the Capitol, the room still more luxurious than any Merchant home in our shithole District. Bodily I led him to the bathroom and made him sit on the toilet while I ran the water. “What was that out there?” I said quickly, making sure to keep the water running. “Is she the girl?”

The boy nodded, breathing slowly as I filled a glass for him. “She would’ve never allowed her sister to have one slip more than the one she had,” he gasped. “And neither would Gale for his brother.”

I didn’t know this Gale and I barely heard the new boy’s name before my old one took my attention. “Example years are when the Capitol chooses the young and the ones with the fewest slips from the weakest Districts,” I said quickly, causing the boy to gape at me. “They tend to happen around milestone years, the Third Quarter Quell is next year; year before mine were two merchant kids.”

I turned off the water and gave him a look; the water trick with two men in a public space was only good for about a minute. “She’s a girl from my class,” the boy said as though I said nothing else. “I…she’s the first one.”

“Of course,” I said. “It’s not easy when you’ve gone to school with them and really this is only your second one, but you got to keep calm; they don’t deserve it.”

The boy gave me a look, which made me almost smile except for it was at my expense. “Yeah, yeah,” I groused. “Any way we need to get a strategy started, sooner rather than later. I know of the girl, she’s…she’s scrappy.”

“She is, she would be the one a smart man would bet on.”

I raised an eyebrow. Peeta Mellark at thirteen was not what a smart man would bet on; in fact, I admitted to putting my odds on his District partner, a hale girl from the Seam named Marcy Jennings who barely made it off her mark. “We shouldn’t discount the boy,” I said slowly.

“No, but we shouldn’t think of him as someone coming home. He’s shorter than I was, thinner, and odds are high my Arena was to an advantage he may not have. The…the girl already has sponsors on her side, volunteering for her sweet beautiful sister, standing there bravely, hugging her competitor tightly…”

“Do you know the story there?”

The boy sighed. “The Hawthornes are heavily tied to the Everdeen family; they both lost a father in a mine explosion some years back,” he said. “Often Katniss Everdeen was seen with the oldest, Gale Hawthorne. This should be his last year; he’s the same age as Rye…”

Tall guy, the one who almost dropped the beloved sister… “Why didn’t he volunteer?” I asked.

“If he did who would be left to take care of their families? He’s now able to go into the mines, make money and if either of them die he’s going to be the one taking care of his family and hers.”

“That’s rather noble,”

“It’s goddamn romantic...”

I peered at the boy whose face twisted into the expression he often wears right before he beats me in chess. He began making hand gestures, laying out some scenario for himself and not including me in it. This grated my nerves given that barely ten minutes ago I was helping him out of a panic attack. He began to laugh and nod as though whatever argument he was having he was winning.  “It could work…” he mused.

“What…”

“Will need to include Rory, but it should be easy to do; he adores her…”

I was about to strangle the kid when I heard Effie’s loud voice preen obnoxiously at the details of the wood paneling or some shit. The train was moving; often they move out of the District quickly lest some idiot decides to throw themselves in front of the tracks or make some other gesture. The boy gave me a smile so free and cheerful that I would almost forget today was the Reaping were I not dressed in my finest and not half asleep or drunk. “Will tell you after dinner, but for now we need to make our Tributes feel at ease and you should focus on looking a little less respectable,” he said, those Capitol inflections thickening to the point of parody.

He maneuvered around me, ruffling my hair for good measure before he made an appearance to our new Tributes who were a part of some game only he knew the rules of so far. As I was the drunken lout I took a pull of my watered-down liquor and for good measure splashed myself with it like fine cologne. I should’ve grabbed the boy before he went out there and started whatever plan he had in mind, but thinking back to that chubby little boy with the white-blond curls and big blue eyes who managed to kill off all of the Careers his year and win without serious injury beyond hunger and dehydration made me pause; it wouldn’t hurt to see where he’s going this year. Maybe District 12 will be lucky and have another Victor this year.


	2. Morning in Victor's Village

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not 10000% sure of this one, but let's check in with Ms. Everdeen? 
> 
> I own nothing, I profit off of nothing.

                The dream that woke me up was a hybrid of past fears and new horrors. I was with a bunch of classmates taking the tour of the mines that happened with every class of thirteen year olds. All of the students were naked and covered in soot and grime, the only bright spots the whites of our teeth and eyes. It felt like my classmates were on some sort of stroll, chatting and pushing each other like we weren’t several meters underground, like we weren’t in an unforgiving grave. We were being led to the big elevators that were meant to ferry us further down, where there was still coal worth picking. But instead of the big elevators, the thing my father likely died in with tens of others like him, there were the tubes used in the Games to ferry us into the sun, into our graves.

                I am pushed towards the tubes by my grubby classmen, who continued to prattle about their petty lives as they make sure I’m to the tubes. Ahead of me a short kid with milky skin and shockingly pale curls is staring down at me as his tube ascends; I only recognize the kid as my Boy with the Bread as he looked during his Tribute Parade, caked in ash and soot with only his diaphanous hair and brilliant eyes breaking through the strategically-applied filth. Those eyes turn my feet to lead and the pushes are harder, even as the joking words and laughter convey a normal occurrence.

                With no choice, I get into the tube and the kids who pushed me there give me the salute for the fallen, the same honor they gave me barely a month ago. The tube shuts around me and I’m no longer naked and thirteen but clothed and sixteen. The tube rises slowly and I see the group of kids change to miners, my father in their midst with that warm smile that was fading from my waking mind but still stayed sharp in my worst nightmares. I begin screaming and beating on the tube as a wall of fire comes from behind and singes the lot of them; yet still I rise until I’m outside to the serene field around a large Cornucopia.

                The other platforms hold the twenty-three kids from my Games in various states of decay and disarray. The kid with the limp from District Ten is holding in his guts, Foxface’s lips are stained with Nightlock, that kid from District’s Three’s face is turned in that fatal angle and Glimmer and the girl from District Four’s faces ooze green puss from the venomous stings. Rue’s rich brown skin was ashen with death and her middle a deep brown from blood and her phlegmy eyes blink at me with tears and her thick plume of hair is in two braids not unlike Prim’s. A few feet away Rory Hawthorne stares at me, that sinister plume of blood still weeping from his throat in spite his heart no longer beating and his various limbs missing or ravaged with mutt bites. I want to run to him, run to Rue, to beg for their forgiveness only for a disapproving tsk to draw my eye to the Cornucopia where Peeta Mellark, still nude and thirteen, sits on the ledge. “If you move they blow up,” he says. “If they blow up what’d be left for their families to mourn?”

                Before I could do anything Cato, his neck holding the last arrow I fired and his face mauled to the quick scoffs from his position. “Oh come now, we dead!” he manages to say. “Here, I’ll do it for you!”

                I woke up as the explosions rippled through the line, my screams sticking to my throat as Rory waxen eyes bore into me as the Tribute beside him exploded. Just a dream; Rory’s in the ground, and Rue’s in the ground, and Cato…was there actually anything left of Cato for the ground? They are gone and I am here and the plush bed that could fit my entire family with room for guests is hot and sticky with my sweat and…am I alone?

                As I slow my breathing I listen; usually Prim or my mother would have been at my side by this time of night, doing what they can to foist sleep syrup on me or let me hold them, depending on which one came my way first. Instead I am alone and the cavernous house I won is disturbingly quiet. It took me a minute to remember that Mrs. Clausen was having her fourth baby and my mother and Prim wanted to stay in the Seam for the birth and care afterwards. Her oldest is Prim’s age with a ton of freckles like his father and for a minute it’s his gormlessly pocked face I see carved up on a Tribute platform with the clock counting down. Maybe next year or the year after or the year after if he doesn’t age out he will be one of the many I get to see, their normal lives ending with the Capitol drawl counting down.

                I shake myself out of that spiral and stare at the ceiling. While giving me and my family a tour of the house Effie described the architecture of the house as Craftsman, whatever that meant with features meant to ‘compliment the rustic nature of the District’ and positively raved about the ceilings and amount of light and the crown molding. It reminded me of the coffin Rory’s body came home in, how it was finer than any bed he would have ever had in the Seam. I count down from one hundred and think of Rory, cold and dead, and Rue cold and dead, and so many others while I lay in this bed built for at least two families with crown molding and solid oak floors and other things I was too dazed to notice. It was only when she started hinting at where my mother and Prim could relocate once Gale and I tied the knot did I at least kicked her and her crew out of the room forced upon me so that I could cry.

                I kick my covers off and make for my bathroom on wobbly legs. My mother insisted I get the largest bedroom and it came with a full bath whereas before we were lucky with a toilet and sink that occasionally spewed tepid water. Now there was a deep soaking tub, a shower stall that seemed made for five, and enough hot water to drown in. I splash water on my face and stare at my reflection. For a girl who was richer and had enough food in the pantry to cater The Hob my face was even thinner than it had been at our leanest. There were dark circles under my eyes and my hair seemed greasy in its braid. When was the last time I used my fancy shower? When was the last time I braided my hair and cleansed my skin and went out into the world? It felt like I lived in the bathroom scrubbing myself in the first week I returned, dirty in spite of the full body polish but it’s week three and there’s a faint odor of night terror and disuse on me. Without thought, I strip and throw myself in the shower.

                Five, ten, fifteen minutes later I emerge smelling like some floral mixture but not feeling any better. I dress mechanically, the only concession to my won riches being my underwear and a pair of socks; before I helped kill twenty-three children I was in dire need and had plans to trade for new ones. Now, at least, I can wear my well-worn boots and not worry about holes. I look in the mirror (because apparently houses like mine have multiple mirrors) and I just look damp and sad. Oh well.

                I leave my room and go downstairs. The lights are off and the sun is barely rising; at least my nightmare was convenient for a change. Effie called the kitchen ‘an open floor plan’, never mind that the space was larger than my old home, which barely had a counter to chop things; now there’s an island. I wind my way around the island and pick up an apple from a grocer that wouldn’t have spat on me if I were on fire a month ago but now crowed about his favorite customers and our decency to have an account. I munch on my apple and leave the kitchen for the front of the house. Right before I was born my great-grandfather on my mother’s side was still alive and loved his granddaughter enough in spite her marriage to donate his dead wife’s rocking chair to our small house and it was one of the few things I couldn’t part with during my purge for money. It sat on the expansive porch, a worn down piece of Merchant extravagance that looked paltry in the freshly-washed gleam of my fine house in the Victor’s Village.

                I sat down in the rocking chair and willed myself to sleep, thinking back to the years when my mother was my mother and would hold me in this chair until the bullshit child terrors left my mind. Instead the sounds of a new day rung in my hunter’s ears, the tranquility interrupted by a slammed door and a string of profanity. I opened my eyes and squint into the distance. To my right and left I had no neighbors, but to the front I had two; one an empty house I have never seen in use and the other Haymitch Abernathy’s, with the titular owner grousing his way down the porch stairs. I frowned and looked up; the sun was turning the world more lavender and normally Haymitch is asleep at this time, his nights typically drinking or whatever activities he does behind his house. “Haymitch,” I yelled.

                The man looks up and I notice that he’s dressed decently, in brown pants and a dark grey shirt with his salt-and-peppered hair actually combed. “Well if it isn’t the Sweetheart of District Twelve,” he drawled.

                I cringed at the second moniker he stuck me with after The Girl on Fire. “What are you doing up?” I asked instead.

                “What’s it to you?”

                “What isn’t it to me, maybe you’re going to fall into a ditch somewhere and I’m going to be inconvenienced identifying your bloated body,”

                We sneered at each other. I once told Prim the man reminded me of her damned cat, but all she could say after the giggles subsided was that she always thought Buttercup favored me and through transitive properties Haymitch and I must be equally yoked. Made me resent Haymitch and loathe the cat even more than before. “Gotta pick some things up in town,” he said.

                “This early? The shops aren’t even open,”

                He heaved a sigh. “Gotta meet the train,” he groused.

                “The delivery train?”

                “Had no idea I was living next to a transportation nut! I’m meeting the boy, alright?”

                This brought me up short. “Peeta?” I asked his back as he bounded away from me.

                “Yeah, Peeta,” he said without turning back.”

                I stood up from my perch and made my way behind him, not even walking too fast to catch up with his meandering stride. I noted that he did not seem to ooze liquor and, oddly, smelt of lemons. “What’s Peeta doing back here?” I asked.

                “Oh not you too,”

                “Me too…what?”

                He cut his eyes at me, accessed me for some unknown failure. His eyes moved skyward and he shook his head like a dog. “You’re getting married to tall and scowly before the Victory Tour,” he said. “Boy’s going to be back and forth on this because I sure as shit don’t do weddings.”

                “I don’t either,”

                “Well, that’s a problem for one of us, isn’t it?”

                I stopped walking after him and yanked his arm, causing the older man to stumble back. This should have been an old argument, one breached after I received my crown to the roar of the Capitol crowds. Instead Haymitch and Peeta spent their time ducking me after my coronation, leaving me with Effie’s simpering affections and the chittering of my prep team. I wasn’t even given a moment to talk to either on the train as Peeta Mellark stayed behind for some school commitment and Haymitch locked himself in his train car and only came out when we got close to town. Being home made things worse as every time I went to see Haymitch he looked halfway in the bag and my attentions were pulled with my sister, my mother, and all the things needed to get settled into our new home with the coffin ceilings and family-sized beds. “Haymitch, I can’t get married,” I hissed.

                “Should of thought of that about a month ago,”

                He was not wrong. My arrival back home featured a huge crowd, all of them looking at me with some sort of reverence where there should have been loathing or disgust or some other reaction appropriate for a murderer. Front and center was Gale, scrubbed within an inch of his life in his Reaping clothes with his eyes glassy with tears, his family nowhere to be found. I had wanted to throw myself at his feet, beg his forgiveness and acknowledge that the Gale the Capitol showed me, the Gale who seemed to want me over his own blood, was a damned lie. Instead, he twirled me around like I weighed nothing and announced to the entire District and the Capitol cameras that we were getting married as soon as possible. In the thunderous applause I noticed Hazelle Hawthorne, three train cars over, receiving the perfectly white Capitol coffin that housed her middle son’s wrecked body. “The whole thing was an act,” I said. “It had to be.”

                “I hate to break it to you, Sweetheart, but I doubt that boy’s that good a damn actor. You saw his interview; he was all moony over you and now you’re alive and not eligible to be Reaped; you said yes and now you’re getting married.”

                “I can barely talk to Gale; he’s been working doubles ‘cause he got kicked out of his home! His mother can’t even look at me; she slapped me and wished me dead…”

                Haymitch stopped walking and sighed. “No mother should see her son die like that,” he said. “Especially since he did it for you; you can’t blame her for feeling a certain way about it.”

                “But Gale should feel that way too, but he wants to marry me? I never wanted to get married Haymitch…”

                “Then why did you say yes?”

                I couldn’t look at him, my dream Rory in my mind’s eye bleeding like a stuck pig. “Rory’s last words to me was that he was glad I’ll be going home,” I said. I looked up and my words got stuck in my throat “That at least I could let Gale know that he did his best to bring me back to him. I…I couldn’t do that to Rory…”

                We stood there, Haymitch’s grey-flecked eyes looking into me like he was reading my soul. I don’t know what he saw, but I could tell that it wasn’t a girl so giggly in love to want a husband before the age of nineteen. I almost saw sympathy in his gaze before he coughed and looked away. “And now you’re engaged and the Capitol is having a shit-fit over it. I know you were probably thinking they’d let you be happily engaged for a few years, let you either grow into it or break shit off easy-like, but there were cameras and that interview a ways back…”

                Of course my homecoming needed cameras, as did the first distribution of parcels with Gale by my side the whole time holding back sneers at the oohs and ahhs of the Capitol film crew as Effie enthused about how our love would enliven our quaint little District.  Effie and the cameras only left after our remote interview with Caesar led to our agreeing to a quick wedding as my Victory Tour would make for the perfect honeymoon; it was honestly the only time I saw Gale look regretful over the whole matter. “Engagements break all the time,” I said. “Surely the people watching will understand that; we would be old news anyway with the Games coming up; it’s not like they care that much about us before.”

                I flinched as he glared at me, the sympathy replaced by something close to fear but definitively angry. That display of emotion made me realize for the first time that I was within striking distance of a man who survived a Hunger Games with a few bodies to his name. “You’re new,” he growled. “There’s a lot you don’t know, but there’s one thing you need to keep to the front of your mind if you’re looking to see your sister make another Reaping; the Capitol gets what the Capitol wants and what it wants is a quaint wedding in this shit-heap District. Their clothes are dumb and their voices stupid, but their memories are long and exhaustive.”

                The angry fear subsided as quickly as it came, though I remained tense. He exhaled through his entire body, shook himself out, and grimaced in some form of apology. “Train’s coming, got to get going.”

                He began walking towards town, his gait taking a longer stride to avoid me. I was unsettled by the phrase ‘you’re new’, as though I voluntarily joined an elite club of his that he had thought closed to new members. I shuddered; I did join a club, a kid-murdering club and I was only the second one he had brought back in over twenty years. As much as I loved my sister I know that had I not volunteered Haymitch would’ve came home alone with two coffins and my new house with the big beds and big ceilings would’ve remained empty and dusty and odds were high my mother would be dead and I would probably want to die. I watched Haymitch walk towards town, then turned to the house in the Village, then back to Haymitch before I decided to follow the man into town, my ire and the prospect of the other District Twelve Victor giving me the first bit of interest since the start of my Games.


	3. Arrival of the Boy with the Bread

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the reviews, shall not turn down a beta: this one was rough.

                The early morning hours in District Twelve belonged to the miners. Before the sun completely entered the sky they would leave their tiny Seam homes in their worn jumpsuits and battered protective gear to go deep into the earth for close to twelve hours a day. If you live long enough, your skin takes on a pastiness born from only one day of sunlight and decades in darkness. When I was younger I used to think that the merchants would be asleep in their soft beds with full stomachs while men like my father and women often like my mother toiled with stooped backs and coal-flecked creases to their skin. It wasn’t until I started trading before school that I noticed that as the miners made their way to work the merchants were up as well. Our trades would interrupt a variety of cleaning, stocking, and inventory projects as vendors made their overpriced wares available for those able to shop. Gale still sneered at that, even if I had noticed the worn faces and stooped backs that attempted to clean storefronts that were as black with coal dust as we were.

                This morning was no different; wives and children barely into Reaping age cleaned as much grime and soot as they could from the front of their stores while their older siblings and their fathers did the heavy lifting. A few took the time to socialize, early as it was for any normal customers, but that was a rarity for the shops with the most daily foot traffic. I noted plenty of Merchants with carts and wheelbarrows joining me and Haymitch on our trek towards the train stations. “Is it Monday?” I wondered aloud, thinking of the one morning Gale and I avoided town due to Merchants stocking up for the week.

                “It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re rendered useless by the government,” Haymitch murmured. “Speaking of, have you started your talent yet?”

                I cringed. “I’m only good at hunting and killing,” I said. “Cinna told me that he was going to pass some designs through me, I can claim that my talent is working with him on clothes. I’m to be his muse.”

                “Yes, because this District is quite known for its attire.”

                “We cannot all be Peeta Mellark; so talented you live in the Capitol most of the year learning how to paint.”

                “Not missing that much,”

                That bit was said so quietly I thought I misheard him at first. Peeta Mellark’s attendance at an exclusive arts school was an oft-cited source of contention in the District, even I wasn’t immune to the grumblings about how of lucky he was, to live in the Capitol all the time and be seen as a citizen. Still, he seemed alone there and everyone else were here; surely if given the same option I’d be too lonely from missing and worrying about Prim to really enjoy any of it. “No, guess not,” I conceded. “Though at least he isn’t forced to get married when he never wanted to get married in the first place.”

                “Oh no, how dare you have a big public wedding to some guy who’s completely in love with you. Your life is so very hard.”

                I fumed. “I’m not even nineteen, Haymitch,” I hissed. “Even my mother thinks this is too young to get married.”

                Haymitch snorted. “This is the Capitol, sweetheart; as far as they’re concerned if you’re old enough to kill people you’re old enough to act like an adult and apparently for you that’s slapping on a fancy dress and living happily ever after with tall, dark, and equally unpleasant.”

                He began to walk faster towards the station. His stride got us into the thick of the Merchant crowd as they made their way to the station, in a sea of tow-heads and slightly better fed bodies. I nodded to Rooba, who was directing a cart by herself; she was one of the few Merchants Gale and I respected in terms of her profession and trading mannerisms. I noted the grocer with his several daughters each pushing wagons and the apothecary trading words with the tailor and shoemaker. Ahead of the tailor I noticed a mop of honey blond curls belonging to Rye Mellark, who was looking sour as he helped his father with one of the wagons. “There are the Mellarks,” I stated. “Are they also here for Peeta?”

                “It’s Monday,” Haymitch shrugged. “They’re here with everyone else.”

                “But their son is coming back from the Capitol…”

                “And it happens to fall on a Monday. Train’s coming.”

                I glared at Haymitch, who looked towards the station with an impatient eye. Then I looked towards the Mellark men and noted that neither looked particularly antsy about the morning’s events, at least not like Haymitch. I thought of my return home from the Games; even if it were not for show I knew that had Prim knew I was coming back after some time away she’d be her own brand of tense and there expressly to greet me instead of the same batch of supplies or whatever a Seam girl would wait at a station for beyond the Games. I tried to recall the things I have heard about the Mellarks, particularly after Peeta’s surprising victory, but before I could collect those thoughts the train roared in.

                It was not the same train that took me and Rory to the Capitol and it was not the train that came every Sunday to gather the coal our District killed themselves to procure. Instead it was a few worn trolleys and several storage containers, much like the Wednesday train that carried the tesserae. It glided towards the depot and made a smooth stop at the end of the line. The storage containers opened, showcasing several bundles of supplies, some Peacekeepers, and some District Six crewmembers. Without prompting the Merchants around us began queueing in some order that seemed to make sense; foodstuff from Districts Nine, Ten and Eleven and materials from Districts Two, Seven and Eight. Very few people came out of the train’s passenger cabin, mostly new Peacekeepers and some rare Capitol officials that were attached to the Mayor’s office, their loud clothing and disgusted faces distinctive even from our respectable distance. After a few chatty looking Peacekeepers an ashen blond figure emerged; Peeta Mellark was home.

                Nearby I could hear the grocer’s daughters sigh and I certainly could not blame them; it seemed as though Peeta Mellark glowed brighter and cleaner than anything in our poor District. Whatever sun there was glinted off his thick mane of pale curls that framed his face and brushed his broad shoulders. He was dressed in a relatively simple blue shirt that was devoid of the gray tinge that came from our polluted water and he wore pants several shades darker than that which were a bright, yet clean, spot after the scant Capitol visitors that preceded him. Even from our distance I could see that his skin gleamed in good health, as though he went through a fresh polish and the armless sunglasses that he wore caught a ray of sun and nearly made his face too radiant to see clearly.

                He made his way from the cabin in good spirits, a large green sack bouncing across one of his shoulders as if it were weightless. The grocer’s daughters tittered as he made eye contact with the few Merchants who noted his arrival and gave them a polite smile and wave with his free hand. Beside me Haymitch rolled his eyes and I almost joined him; I never liked the grocer’s girls and something told me that they were helping their family expressly to gawk. Not that I could blame them; even I wasn’t unaware of how well his shirt fit across his chest and how his strange glasses drew the eye to his aquiline nose and full lips that complemented his strong jawline. I imagined that were he as dirty and sad as everything else in our poor District he would still catch several favorable eyes. When he got close his polite smile widened, showcasing nearly all of his straight white teeth. As soon as he got into reaching distance he dropped his sack and encompassed Haymitch in a strong hug. “You did not have to come,” he laughed.

                That anyone would hug Haymitch Abernathy was shocking enough, but the fact that Haymitch merely laughed and hugged him back threw me. “I come every time, don’t see why you’re surprised,” Haymitch groused, patting the younger man on the back a few times before breaking contact. He gave him a familial once-over and laughed softly to himself. “You alright?”

                Peeta shrugged. “As right as I can be. Are you keeping up with your medications? You’re looking much better…”

                 “Bah, damned shit makes me constipated,”

                 “Haymitch…”

                The two glared at each other, though I couldn’t see how Peeta was looking at him it stunned me to see Haymitch’s eyes go from defiance to contrition. There was a time where Gale and I would be able to have short conversations without saying a word; and now I think I witnessed a completely mute fight where mean old Haymitch Abernathy was the loser. Something in my face must have alerted Peeta of their immediate audience as those mirrored eyes turned to me. “Katniss Everdeen,” he said with a smile that was not as bright as it was earlier. “This is a nice surprise.”

                I scowled, noting how the phrase ‘nice’ seemed hesitant coming from him. Granted, he was Rory’s mentor more than mine; maybe he too harbored feelings about me being home instead of the middle Hawthorne son. Haymitch snorted. “Sweetheart here’s a nosy pest,” he interjected. “Accosted me on my way here and wouldn’t leave me alone.”

                Peeta chuckled. “Well, curiosity’s dangerous for cats and Katnisses alike, perhaps,” he said, the pluralizing of my name drawing out a Capitoline inflection in his raspy townie drawl. “Surprised you didn’t get a knife to the gut for your troubles.”

                 “I can take care of myself,” I bit back.

                 “Obviously, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

                He leaned in close, bringing with him a surprising amount of warmth and the smell of spices, clean clothing, and boy.  “I am quite grateful for that,” he murmured, his breath tickling my ear. “It is good to see you alive.”

                He pulled away and for a moment I wish I was able to see his eyes, figure out what expression he could be hiding as his face remained genial but somewhat distant. Instead he laughed lightly and ran a hand through his curls. “Your tenacity of spirit is all anyone can talk about in the Capitol. That, and your upcoming wedding...”

                He looked around, almost as if he did not realize that there was a crowd. I noted that in his perusal his head barely veered in the direction of his father and brother even as every free eye was on our Victor trio. He turned back to us and smirked. “We should probably discuss particulars someplace else,” he said. “Supposed to be an exclusive event, heaven forbid anyone in town suddenly got a yearning to make coin dealing with Capitol tabloids.”

                He and Haymitch chuckled; I did not know whether to be mad at the jab against the very District we called home, the way my wedding was apparently a hot topic of conversation in spite my reservations about the entire affair, or the way they were both so damn chummy while I barely got two grunts from Haymitch since I became his neighbor. All I knew was that I was beginning to hate his quiet laughs, almost as if they were at my expense over some slight I was unaware of. “Heaven forbid something private leaks out,” I sneered. “Like matters that concern me and mine.”

                Even without seeing his eyes I could tell that Peeta was looking at me with the same patronizing annoyance Haymitch had earlier. “You’re a Victor, now;” he confirmed, “your life is the Capitol’s to coo and pick at until you’re dried out and useless. And even then they’re still likely to drag you out for the elderly in some convoluted program for the particularly nostalgic.”

                He sighed like my presence annoyed him and turned back to Haymitch. “Still, Effie’s arriving in a fortnight and until then I’ve been advised to tell you two to keep any percolating ideas close to the vest.”

                “What,” I exclaimed.

                They both looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Effie’s been banging on about this wedding every damn day,” Haymitch groused. “Hasn’t she called you?”

                Considering my mornings were normally spent in a tired stupor or in the woods trying to breathe again I could only shake my head. “Well, she’s coming and goody for me she’s staying at mine,” Peeta smirked. “She’s losing her mind, most Capitol weddings worth a damn are supposed to take at least two years to plan and this time table might drive her to drink.”

                 “I’d pay to see that,” Haymitch smirked. “Might even join the simpering old bag…”

                 “Like hell you will; it took too fucking long to get your enzymes realigned…”

                “Damn, boy; I’m joking. Now can we get the fuck out of here? Those girls over there are going to come over here if we stand here any longer and I’m not in the mood to hear them ask you inane questions about hair colors or some shit.”

                Peeta laughed loud enough to startle some of the people in their work. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the Mellark men glance our way. Peeta, not caring that he disrupted the town with his amusement, bent over and picked up his sack and tossed it over his shoulders again. “We should get going then,” he announced. “Is my fridge stocked?”

                The two began walking as though I was not with them, bickering lightly about Haymitch’s choice of groceries. Ignored, I looked over at the Mellarks and noticed that they had paused their labor and were not hiding their interest in our group. Rye’s normally genial face went neutral while Mr. Mellark appeared to be in some sort of pain, his eyes raking over his youngest son greedily. Why wouldn’t they have been there for his return to town? Why is it only now that I wonder why there are no extraneous Mellarks in the Victor’s Village to at least counter Haymitch’s general disinterest? To be fair I was still relatively new to trading beyond the Hob when Peeta had won his Games, but I could only recall maybe a week or two that the bakery went unoccupied before the entire family came back and operated as though they had lost their child to the Games.

                Before, when the taste of burnt bread still lingered on my tongue, I was aware of Peeta Mellark in a way that scared me but it seemed like after he won and manage to come home whole and shiny and healthy that awareness faded and even details like his family’s living arrangements evaded me in my quest to keep my family fed.  Now he was a bright stranger who comes and goes from our District and is no longer tied to the bakery or the town or anything having to do with life in District Twelve. Now he’s an interesting stranger that gets Haymitch to quit drinking and the Mellark men to look sad and incomplete. Hesitantly I waved at Mr. Mellark who grimaced and gave me a nod of recognition before he began and Rye began the process of loading the cart, sacks of flour almost as big as Peeta’s duffle around their broad shoulders in a similar manner. I looked over to the back of Haymitch and Peeta, whose gaits were matching and their snipping genial in nature and suddenly felt some gratitude that so far my relationships with Prim and my mother were intact, even as my life was set to become as much of a spectacle as my former Boy with the Bread’s.


	4. Familial Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, I almost scrapped this chapter but I wanted to get a feel for Prim and Mrs. Everdeen

The walk back to the Village was brisk and lively, at least for the two men who spent the short journey alternating between bickering and fond concern. I trudged behind them, my mind still on town and the pained look on Mr. Mellark’s face. The sight of my mother and sister coming from the direction of the Seam took me out of my thoughts. They were dressed in threadbare clothes that were spattered with blood and other bodily fluids. My mother’s blond hair was falling out of her normally tidy bun and Prim looked as if she was in a race, her face splotchy and pained with the front of her dress drenched in sweat. Thoughts of the Mellark family and my fellow Victors flew out of my mind as I ditched them and ran towards my family. “What’s going on?” I asked.

                “It was a difficult birth,” my mother said as I examined Prim. “Emmaline almost didn’t make it. It will be touch and go, but her son’s healthy at least.”

                “I’m fine, Katniss,” Prim smiled even through a yawn. “Mr. Clausen was occupied with one of their sick children and Mrs. Clausen needed someone to support her from behind, was soaked by the time she passed the afterbirth.”

                I was about to reprimand our mother for having my sister in that situation when Prim’s eyes slid past me and widened. I turned and cursed the fact that Haymitch and Peeta had stopped their comradery and were now witnesses to my small reunion. The Seam in me bristled to defense of my mother and sister’s haggard appearances, their petite frames shrunken against the vividness of Peeta Mellark. Peeta was once from the town, now he’s damn near a Capitolite and I braced for coldness in spite the bit of warmth I witnessed earlier. “I hope for Mrs. Clausen’s family’s sake that she will recover,” Peeta offered.

                It took all I had not to react as my mother turned pink and rung her still-pink hands. Seeing my family looking at Peeta like that disturbed me, almost as if they were thrust upon Caesar Flickerman’s stage instead of standing in front of a boy my age and some old drunk. “She is a strong woman, I have faith in her,” my mother said.  

                My family reflected off Peeta’s sunglasses as he smiled at them before turning towards Haymitch. They exchanged a one-side look that made me wary and turned towards me. “We should get out of their way, I think,” Peeta mused. He turned back to my mother and Prim and his smile widened to the canines. “I think we need to set up dinner at mine when I’m set up; I’m sure Haymitch has been slacking in welcoming our new neighbors. Please let me know when’d be best for you?”

                Haymitch pulled a face that caused Prim to snort with laughter; this might have been the most either of them have been around our other Victor since I arrived home. That bit of inquiry seemed to awaken the Merchant in my mother as she and Peeta started a quick dance that resulted in a dinner planned for the end of the week.  With a small wave the two Victors walked off towards Peeta’s house, murmuring to each other along the way. My family turned to me, Prim’s face still pink and my mother’s eyebrows inquisitive. “Did you know he was coming?” my mother asked.

                I sighed and steered the two towards our house. “First I heard of it was when I saw Haymitch,” I said once we entered the threshold and went towards the kitchen. “Says he’s here for my wedding, told me that Effie’s coming…”

                “Ah, yes, that’s right; Effie. She’s coming in to go over the particulars of the wedding,”

                “How…”

                “She has been calling every morning, Katniss. I don’t think she’s been a fan of the excuses I’ve made for why you have not been around to answer her calls.”

                “And this wasn’t something I needed to know?”

                “Her calls have lined up with a horrible illness and a spate of births, it’s slipped my mind.”

                I fumed as my mother set her kit down by the large sink and began the process of sterilizing the tools within. Prim threw herself into one of the chairs in what Effie told me was the breakfast nook and stretched her arms with a yawn. “You should go to bed, Prim,” I frowned as my mother began her cleansing ritual.

                Prim smiled and shook her head. “I have a test in first period that I cannot miss,” she said. “Besides, Peeta Mellark’s back in the District and I got to see him up close; so many are going to ask me what he’s like.”

                I scowled, thinking of the girls at the train station. “There were plenty of girls at the station who know just as much about him as we do and I’m sure your teacher would understand you being late because you were helping with a delivery?”

                “I can call the school after I finish cleaning these implements,” Mom offered. “Maybe you can take the afternoon to do your test?”

                I ignored the little glance my mother gave me, some sort of need for me to acknowledge her doing her job. Prim gave me a look, dashing my hopes that she did not notice. “That was a horribly long night,” she declared. “Mrs. Clausen was so brave, that was a very large baby; I haven’t seen one so big…”

                “He’s a very healthy baby boy,” Mom agreed.

                “Hope he stays that way,” I murmured. “Winter’s coming and they have so many mouths to feed.”

                My mother hummed and began rinsing while Prim glared at me. “He’s going to be fine,” she declared. “He was so cute, too, with such big eyes. And her other children are doing quite well, actually…”

                Prim’s chatter washed over me as I prepared her breakfast. Gale once told me that I had sheltered my sister too much, maybe he was right. The odds of the entire Clausen family surviving the winter were low, and they were the luckier ones. In spite the nightly horrors it’s been a blessing to be able to prepare cereal without Tesserae grain as so many only have that to rely on. The Clausens didn’t even have enough within Reaping age to boost for more grain, but that was its own blessing. As it stood, the up-coming rations celebrating my win should be enough to keep more alive. Still, I had thought Prim would be more attuned to the realities we lived in… A quiet snort of laughter from our mother drew me back into the talk around me. “Sorry?” I frowned, placing the grain in front of Prim.

                “I don’t see why it’s funny,” Prim frowned, her eyes on our mother. “Katniss is no longer eligible for the Reaping, Gale has aged out, and they’re getting married before the Victory Tour; of course they’re going to have babies.”              

                “She does not want babies,” my mother chortled.

                “I don’t want babies,” I frowned.

                “But you’re free from the Games!”

                You’re not, is what I wanted to say. Instead I exchanged a glance with our mother as Prim prattled on about my theoretical children. As we were moving from our house in the Seam to the Village my mother threw a pouch of wild carrot seed at me and provided instruction on how to use them to prevent pregnancy; while she did not mind my marriage to Gale she was adamant that I shouldn’t have children until at least Prim was the age I am now. I was not sure why my mother kept her desires from Prim, but listen to her swoon about me and Gale filling the house with kids filled me with dread. The brunt of the Victors from the Career Districts were legacies, with one or both parents previous Victors; odds were high that any child I had with my District partner’s brother would be prime pickings for Effie Trinket’s talons. “And if you have a boy you could name him after Rory,” she concluded. “It would be a good way to remember him…”

                My insides turned cold. “I don’t want children, Prim,” I repeated.

                “You’re free from the Games, Katniss! And Gale would be a wonderful father, he’s so good with Vick and Posy and you’ve done so much for me since father died.”

                “Primrose…” our mother sighed.

                “Hazelle thinks it’d be a wonderful idea. It would be a beautiful tribute…”

                Only Prim’s gasp made me realize that I slammed my hand down hard on the table. “Hazelle slapped me in the face and blamed me for Rory’s death,” I snarled. “She kicked Gale out of his home, yet there she is talking about me like your damned goat.”

                Prim looked at me with big blue eyes, a cornered rabbit in one of Gale’s snares. “She’ll take Gale back though, I know she will…”

                I couldn’t breathe. Instead of saying anything I could regret I stormed away from my family, past both of their protests, to the outside world. The sun was blazing, it was too bright to hunt when all the animals were going about their business and I wanted nothing to do with town. I took several steps from the house, relieved that neither followed me but adrift nevertheless. Gale and I could be cousins, any child of ours has as much chance of looking like Gale as they did me and Rory was a younger Gale. Could I birth a version of Rory, love that version, and send him to die like Rory? Is all my worth now for replacing a boy both my sister and Hazelle loved? I don’t want any of this, I can’t have any of this.

                My feet lead me through the lively town and back towards the Seam. It smelled there, I hadn’t really appreciated how much it smelled there until I came back from the Capitol. Waste and coal and mud and all sorts of dirty things. Small children meandered, some playing while others sat somewhat listlessly, their gray and brown eyes looking mostly vacant. A man with no legs was widling on his porch, some other broken people clumped together around some white liquor. Hazelle Hawthorne was outside amongst her rows of laundry lines, townie linens dewy with lye water being hung to dry. Despite my best efforts our eyes met on my trek; her namesake eyes fixing me with wariness and pain that seemed to age her decades. I couldn’t hold her gaze, instead taking my eyes to the ground as I made my way to the home that held me for sixteen years.

                Our home was still empty, still in my mother’s name and she mentioned turning the house into a place to care for the more seriously wounded. It felt grey and cramped and drafty where once it felt like a home. If I tried I could still hear my father humming and Prim’s baby giggles. My home is empty, what little is left is in a kitchen the size of three of these rooms likely worrying about me. Hazelle Hawthorne sees a girl who came back instead of her son, her husband’s namesake. I went to my old room and laid on the bed Prim and I shared since she stopped sleeping in a crib. If I close my eyes I can still smell the girl I was before, who starved and scraped but could say she didn’t kill anyone, that her friend’s family was relatively whole and her sister’s sweetness didn’t grate. Where the Boy with the Bread was just an internal hope long unaddressed and my best friend was just my best friend. With the smells of home and thoughts of my past, I fell into a fretful slumber.


End file.
